Til Death Do Us Part
by Abigail the Jedi
Summary: Why did the King of the Dead change his mind about helping Aragorn after their spat in the Paths of the Dead?


It's not mine, I'm making no money off of this, yadda, yadda, yadda.

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**'Til Death Do Us Part**

The King was not having a good day. First he noticed that his ear had fallen off again. Normally this wasn't much of a problem since, being undead; he could always just stick it on again. But today, he couldn't for the afterlife of him recall where he had misplaced it. Then he had to break up an impromptu duel between two of his warriors over whose turn it was to repaint the warning over the front door. But to put the ectoplasm on the cake some young punk and his band of hooligans had burst into the catacombs and claimed he was the heir of Isildur. He even had the gall to demand the King swear allegiance to him. So the King had no choice but to turn on the ghostly hands again and release the avalanche of skulls which always was such a hassle to set up again.

Yes. It had been a trying day. And at the end of such a day the King liked nothing better than to come home to his ghostly palace, rest his bones in his favorite armchair, and lean back with a large, albeit empty, glass. (It was the thought that counted.) What he was not expecting was having to duck a well-aimed funerary urn hurtling towards his head.

"What have you been doing?" his wife screeched as she began to take aim with another urn. She had been the love of his life when he was alive but after the first couple of centuries of their shared undeath he had started to regret his edict to expel all lawyers from his kingdom. What had seemed like such a good idea at the time was, in hindsight, making it very difficult to procure the necessary divorce papers.

"Now, Mrs. King," he started whilst avoiding her next missile, "you know Uncle Athelbert wouldn't like you doing that to his remains."

"Don't you start that 'Mrs. King' business with me you ungracious maggot! I saw what you did when that nice young man came in here earlier!"

The King decided that feigning ignorance was his best defense. "Why! Whatever do you mean my lovely cypress blossom?"

His wife rolled her eyes very effectively in their large sockets and sighed. "Its the same thing every time some one tries to come pay a visit. You end up scaring them to death with your 'The door is closed and the dead own it' routine before I can even dust off some of the cobwebs."

"Actually dear, the precise wording is 'the way is shut and the dead keep it'," said the King throwing caution to the winds. After all, what was the worst she could do to him? He was already dead.

Objects flew through the air and moaning winds whipped around the room as his wife gathered as much spectral energy as possible to her. "Of course the dead bloody well keep it! Who else would want it? When you heard we were going to be spending all eternity in an underground city of the dead you could have at least picked a nicer piece of real estate! This dump has absolutely no resale value! And that stupid floor of skulls! I asked for a nice parquet but, 'No,' you said, 'the floor made of skulls helps create the proper ambiance,' you said! I tell you what it creates, a right proper mess! It's impossible to clean. Just last week I was having tea with Neferbet down in Harad and you should just see the pyramid that her husband got for them. And the whole thing was kept clean as an elf's bottom. The great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren came by twice a week with offerings, too. I was so ashamed of this pit I could barely come up with a proper excuse when she asked why we never hold our get togethers here."

" What a liar that priest was! ''Til death do us part.' Hmph! We should have parted a couple of millennia ago," the King muttered under his breath. But his words were not quiet enough to escape his wife's notice.

"Well," she replied," I don't see you doing anything to speed up the process! You hardly rolled out the welcome mat for the 'Heir of Him to Whom the Oath We Swore' when he came by today. You never were good when company came but judging by the way he and his friends ran out you'd have thought the mountain was coming down on them!"

The King shrunk down in his seat. "You're not far off, Mrs. King."

"Oh no," she said with a tired sigh, "You didn't set off the avalanche of skulls again did you? You know it takes forever to clean them all up."

He decided she looked her most human when she talked of cleaning or cooking. Such mundane things seemed to remind her of what she once was even when she was so mad that all of her bones were showing. When she stopped looking like the queen of an undead king and started to resemble more of a harried, middle aged housewife the King could remember why he had loved her. Perhaps eternity wasn't so bad after all.

"Of course," she continued," Now that Isildur's Heir has left you'll have quite a long time to set them all up again. And while you are at it you can also get to work on renovating this terrible hole. Neferbet gave me some blueprints that Imhotep drew up for her when he was designing her first funerary complex."

The king felt the icy cold grip of fear clutch his incorporeal heart.

"We don't have to start out with it as large as her and Ankhsie's and we certainly can do without that vulgar wallpaper. I can't abide all those men with animal heads and I'm sure those young ladies wearing fishing nets would give you the wrong idea. Maybe we could do something in a nice chintz pattern instead. That would brighten the place up a great deal."

The King had the horrible premonition of spending his centuries of punishment sitting in his armchair, which had been reupholstered in something pink and flowery. He shuddered with revulsion.

"And that dreadful chair of yours will have to go. Its almost as old as you are."

The King was starting to panic. The idea of an eternity without his armchair had never entered his most horrible nightmares. Before she could say anything else he rushed up and out the door. There was only one way to prevent this catastrophe.

His wife looked up from her decorating magazines and shouted after him, "Where are you going now?"

"Nowhere, my graveyard lily! Just taking care of some unfinished business!"

Aragorn watched the corsair fleet continue to sail down the Anduin unimpeded. He barely registered Legolas' sympathetic hand on his shoulder. He had failed in his mission. He had failed Arwen. He had failed Gondor. He had failed everyone . All was lost. A dozen suicidal plans of attacking the ships with only Legolas and Gimli went through his head but he was incapable of action. He could only sit and stare in stunned silence as the ships sailed on.

From behind him came a familiar rush of wind. Aragorn turned around to see the King of the Dead striding towards him with determination and a hint of something else (Was that desperation?) in his eyes.

"We fight."

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Author's notes:

The 'Mrs. King' bits were taken (with much love) from The Madness of King George, an absolutely wonderful movie. (With added Bilbo!)

Neferbet is just a generic Egyptian female name, Imhotep was the architect of the square pyramid, priest, physician, and that dude from The Mummy, Ankhsie is just my nickname for any pharaoh unfortunate enough to get 'ankh' stuck as part of his name.

Try to catch all the references to ROTK dialogue in here. Go on, I dare you.

And I swear I'm getting to work on The Gospel According To Tolkien any minute now. I've just had a yearlong case of writer's block.


End file.
